RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)


  • We Need to Do Better Than Another Enlightenment

    Source: Brownstone Institute
    by David Bell

    “The average person of the Enlightenment era, it seems to me, was not sitting around in salons sharing the free flow of ideas, but being oppressed and kicked around by their enlightened compatriots or invaders. There were some good ideas and far better art and music than much of the soulless fare of today — but this arose not from a flourishing paradise but closer to, for many, a living hell. Perhaps it was poverty and harsh reality that opened Handel’s mind and inspired Rembrandt’s brush, and we now miss something that this makes us see. But this better be by choice. Looking back to former times is a good way to learn and understand, and a person ignorant of history is like a scrap of paper blown in the wind. But history was written by the literate elite and should not be confused with a destination.” (11/25/25)

    https://brownstone.org/articles/we-need-to-do-better-than-another-enlightenment/

  • You Must Refuse Illegal Orders. If This Be Treason, Make The Most Of It.

    Source: Garrison Center
    by Thomas L Knapp

    “It’s been 40 years since I spent the summer in San Diego becoming a US Marine. I’m sure things have changed since then, but I doubt they’ve changed so much that anyone graduates any armed forces boot camp without receiving instruction in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A summary, from memory, on the section (Article 92) concerning orders: You must obey lawful orders. You must not obey unlawful orders. … If it’s ‘treason’ or ‘sedition’ to state that fact, then every instructor in every basic training class on military law is a traitor who’s been teaching treason and preaching sedition to every recruit since 1950, when the UCMJ was adopted … and probably long before that.” (11/25/25)

    https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20166

  • Localism, Not Nationalism, Will Cure What Ails Rural America

    Source: Persuasion
    by Jeffery Tiler Syck

    “The collapse of rural towns, small industrial cities, and remote farms has coincided with the decline of local cultures. A local identity brings with it pride of place and a certain willingness to live with the disadvantages endemic to the location. When people feel that their locality serves a purpose—that it is embedded within a larger whole — they are willing to tolerate or even embrace its remoteness, slower pace of life, and faulty infrastructure. Rural Americans once thrived on a belief that for all their region’s faults, they were the backbone of the nation. But [JD] Vance’s concept of the nation does not restore this sense of local pride. Instead, it substitutes a globalized vision of tradition for a local one.” (11/25/25)

    https://www.persuasion.community/p/localism-not-nationalism-will-cure

  • Filling the Swamp

    Source: Independent Institute
    by Sam Jenson

    “In September 2024, U.S. border czar Tom Homan met with undercover FBI agents acting as business executives. According to sources interviewed by The New York Times, he accepted $50,000 hidden in a CAVA bag and guaranteed those undercover agents lucrative federal contracts. FBI agents recorded Homan accepting the cash as part of a broader probe into corruption within the Trump administration. This is corruption. In September, a Trump appointed DOJ official called it a ‘deep state’ probe. Despite having recorded evidence of Homan accepting the bribe, the White House denies any wrongdoing on Homan’s part. … Homan’s case is not an isolated incident.” (11/24/25)

    https://www.independent.org/article/2025/11/24/filling-swamp-homan/

  • Trump’s “Unlawful Orders” Dispute

    Source: Antiwar.com
    by Ted Galen Carpenter

    “President Donald Trump is at the center of yet another bitter constitutional crisis. His political adversaries have mounted a concerted campaign urging military personnel to disobey any ‘illegal orders.’ Trump responded to such calls by threatening to prosecute and even execute proponents for engaging in ‘seditious behavior.’ Since the U.S. Constitution designates the president as commander-in-chief of the armed services, Trump is, of course, currently at the top of the military’s chain of command. Defiance by subordinates, he asserted, would constitute treason. There are numerous important issues at stake. They include the proper extent of the president’s powers under the Constitution, preserving civilian control of the military, the nature of the oath that military personnel take to protect and defend the Constitution, and the appropriate remedy if it appears that the president as commander-in-chief has given an unlawful order.” (11/25/25)

    https://original.antiwar.com/ted_galen_carpenter/2025/11/24/trumps-unlawful-orders-dispute

  • Elon Musk exposes real foreign racists with based new X feature

    Source: The Hill
    by Robby Soave

    “Location, location, location. That’s what matters now on X, because Elon Musk has just rolled out a hugely important new feature, and it’s confirming what some of us have suspected was the case for some time now. It turns out that many of the openly racist and anti-Semitic accounts on X that claim to be America First but are actually giving MAGA a bad name — well, they’re not true America First at all. In fact, they’re largely coming from Muslim countries. And now we have the proof. A week ago, Fox News personality Katie Pavlich, a friend of mine, posted on X: ‘Hey @elonmusk, please make it mandatory that wherever an account is based – country – be featured in an account’s public profile. Foreign bots are tearing America apart. Thanks.’ In response, Nikita Bier, head of product development at X, said, ‘Give me 72 hours.’ And now, X has delivered.” (11/24/25)

    https://thehill.com/opinion/robbys-radar/5620581-elon-musk-exposes-foreign-bots/

  • The arithmetic of availability: Prospects for American grid dominance in 2030

    Source: Niskanen Center
    by Kenneth Sercy & Liza Reed

    “Energy policy debates often sound like a choice among competing visions of which type of energy would best power America’s future: ‘dispatchable,’ on-demand power produced from fossil fuels and nuclear energy, or quick-build, cheap energy from renewables such as wind and solar? If only our choice was that simplistic. The reality, however, is that between now and 2030, surging demand for energy will collide with longstanding bottlenecks on new capacity. This mismatch between supply and demand stands to limit how much energy the grid can deliver to build homes, create jobs, support national security, drive the economy — everything we count on energy to do. Meanwhile, competitors such as China are able to rapidly bring new capacity online for data centers and other economic and security imperatives.” (11/25/25)

    https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-arithmetic-of-availability-prospects-for-american-grid-dominance-in-2030/

  • Outernet Integrity

    Source: Common Sense
    by Paul Jacob

    “The Internet is a global network. Update a website or type an email over here, in a jiffy it ends up over there, even if ‘there’ is thousands of miles away. Now, in cases where the connections of the interconnection get disrupted, the electrons (well, ‘packets’) are routinely diverted to a more stable path. … But not always. Certainly not if we’re talking about a major undersea data cable. Were such a cable accidentally severed — or deliberately severed, by a hostile power practicing for war, say, the People’s Republic of China — transmission of data between affected countries may stop dead until the cable can be fixed. Declan Ganley wants to cure this particular vulnerability by building an alternative he calls the Outernet, a space-based version of the Internet that bypasses the earthbound network entirely.” (11/25/25)

    https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/11/25/outernet-integrity/

  • If you expect transparency on Epstein now, you don’t get the swamp

    Source: USA Today
    by Cameron Smith

    “It’s hard to imagine a greater political opportunity than releasing the full, unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files. The late financier was an unscrupulous magnet for the world’s most powerful. The task from President Donald Trump’s base was simple: Release the names, prosecute the guilty and prove that the government, when properly led, won’t protect the rich and connected. Instead, we got months of resistance, bizarre denials and attempts to frame the issue as a ‘Democrat hoax’ …. After all the performative huffing and puffing, the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House with just one dissenting vote, flew through the Senate and was signed into law by Trump. That’s nearly unanimous consent from a Congress that can’t agree on lunch. … One would think that would be the end of the story and transparency would flow like waterfalls. Unfortunately, that’s not how swamp water works.” (11/25/25)

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/11/25/trump-epstein-files-republicans-bondi/87446919007/

  • Ozymandias on the Potomac: Energy Policy and the Politics of American Decline

    Source: TomDispatch
    by Alfred McCoy

    “At the dawning of the British Empire in 1818, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley penned a memorable sonnet freighted with foreboding about the inevitable decline of all empires, whether in ancient Egypt or then-modern Britain. In Shelly’s stanzas, a traveler in Egypt comes across the ruins of a once-monumental statue, with ‘a shattered visage lying half sunk’ in desert sands bearing the ‘sneer of cold command.’ Only its ‘trunkless legs of stone’ remain standing. Yet the inscription carved on those stones still proclaims: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ And in a silent mockery of such imperial hubris, all the trappings of that awesome power, all the palaces and fortresses, have been utterly erased, leaving only a desolation ‘boundless and bare’ as ‘the lone and level sands stretch far away.'” (11/25/25)

    https://tomdispatch.com/ozymandias-on-the-potomac/

  • Jeffrey Epstein Aided Alan Dershowitz’s Attack on Mearsheimer and Walt’s “Israel Lobby”

    Source: Drop Site
    by Ryan Grim & Murtaza Hussain

    “Epstein and Alan Dershowitz collaborated on smear campaigns against Mearsheimer, Walt, and an underage assault victim making allegations against Epstein — in the same week.” (11/25/25)

    https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-aided-alan-dershowitz-mearsheimer-walt-israel-lobby

  • The Wobbling of King Trump

    Source: Foreign Policy
    by Michael Hirsh

    “[I]n the longer reach of Western history, Trump’s behavior is far more a rule than an exception. He is, really, just another giant ego out there smashing things and trying to rebuild them in his own image — perhaps even to the good on occasion. And there’s something strangely reassuring in that. Why? Because like the most extreme autocrats of the past, who almost invariably fell through arrogance and overreach, we’re already starting to see cracks in the reign of the would-be Emperor Donald the First.” (11/25/25)

    https://archive.is/WjSXI

  • The Nation’s Guest

    Source: Law & Liberty
    by Iris de Rode

    “New York, August 16, 1824. The guns had scarcely fallen silent when the bells began. Bunting unfurled; apprentices scrambled onto rooftops; veterans pinned sun-faded cockades. A steamboat shrieked past Staten Island as ferries veered in for a glimpse of the man the papers called the Nation’s Guest. Then the figure who had once ridden beside Washington — older now but unmistakable — stepped ashore at Castle Garden: Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette. At the subsequent reception, ‘In they came, rich and poor, Black and white … old veterans, young soldiers.’ For thirteen months and more than six thousand miles, through all twenty-four states, variations of that scene replayed: processions, banquets, tears, toasts. Ryan L. Cole’s The Last Adieu invites us to follow Lafayette’s Farewell Tour — and asks why it mattered.” (11/25/25)

    https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-nations-guest/

  • From lawfare to lawflop: Trump case dies, but could rise again

    Source: Fox News
    by Jonathan Turley

    “If we are living in an age of lawfare, it is fast becoming a war of attrition. The dismissal of the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and current New York Attorney General Letitia James is the latest twist in the controversial prosecutions of Trump antagonists. James immediately posted a message celebrating the decision, but she may want to focus on the prepositional phrase following the word ‘dismissal’: ‘without prejudice.’ The administration may still be able to revive these cases. James’[s] victory lap on social media is a fitting addition to the opinion, which emphasized President Donald Trump’s social media postings about these cases. U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie noted that Trump had demanded the indictment of these and other individuals shortly before the charges were handed down.” (11/25/25)

    https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jonathan-turley-from-lawfare-lawflop-trump-case-dies-could-rise-again